Re: Validating for Accessibility

On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> I propose that this discussion move to the ER mailing list entirely, unless
> anyone objects. So please make that the recipient of further posts if nobody
> screams...

Aaargh!!!

[ sorry ]

The ER mailing list seems to me a little obscure.  I found the address
at <URL:http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/WG/>, where the joining instructions
are to mail the chairman, and the list archives appear to be empty.
This did not appear particularly welcoming to me, as an outsider who
has been ignored in the past by W3C people.  I only found the one under
/ER/IR/ to be different just now after reading Kynn Bartlett's post.

> This is an interesting approach. It seems much like the approach taken in
> developing the schematron accessiblity validation.

Ah.  Yes, that appears to be a cousin to the project.  Thanks for the
pointer.

>	 (for a list of tools
> including schematron, Bobby and others, see
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools the ER tools list.)

Yes, I've looked at some of them.  How would I go about getting my
tools listed there?

>  The question is,
> of course, what can be tested using SGML/XML validity type checking?

That's a long answer: I think I'll put mine on the Web and open it for 
discussion there, rather than post it in full.

> In fact I think that better heuristics to generate warnings, and simpler
> approaches to the test which are relatively simple, are both going to be part
> of the solution for a good accessibility testing (and repairing) aid.

Indeed.  But there are well-developed and well-known heuristic-based tools
such as Bobby and Tidy.  I'm not about to work on yet-another-one (unless
perhaps someone pays me to do so), as reinventing an old wheel holds
little interest to me.

> As a final note, your opinion on whether it would be easy and / or useful to
> generate a machine-readable output format (the EDL / EARL project that the ER
> group is working on) would be interesting.

Yes, I do envisage generating machine-readable output, though at what
level remains to be determined.  If I'm invited to join the ER group,
- and perhaps if you suggest a URL for reading - I'll take a proper
look at your project.

-- 
Nick Kew

Received on Thursday, 28 December 2000 07:05:37 UTC